Transit Fantasy: Kronos (1957) Meets the Church Avenue Trolley

 

 

These series of pictures were part of an Powerpoint presentation that I experimented with many years ago.  Of course, in Blogger, I cannot post a Powerpoint file so you will see a series of JPEG files.

 

The main background here is a great picture from the Frank Pfuhler collection taken from Dave's Rail Pix.  It shows a Church Avenue trolley (PCC # 1050) running eastbound on Church Avenue near East 18th Street near the BMT Brighton Line Church Avenue station.  The view is towards the south west during a snow storm.  On the antique street lamp is an advertisement  for a great film "I'll Cry Tomorrow" that tells the story of Lillian Roth.  I believe the year is 1955-56.  Kronos was a science fiction film that was released in 1957, so in reality, Kronos would not have ever meet the Church Avenue Trolley because it was released one year later.  I was a small child when Kronos came out and the "monster" or "alien", or whatever you will call it, was a ET that grew larger as it absorbed energy.  It had two poles at it's top that could, in my fantasy, be connected to any set of trolleybus wires.  Of course, on Church Avenue, you had a simple standard streetcar wire network. so we can say, the Kronos did not have a return for the positive current as shown below.  In this series, Kronos "takes a walk" on Church Avenue, looking at the "I'll Cry Tomorrow" advertisement, slips in the snow and goes west on Church Avenue.  It ends up on the Third Avenue El (demolished a year earlier) and makes a cameo visit to the Ninth Avenue Lower station on the Culver Line.  By the way, Kronos, as it grew bigger, became bigger than a 100 story building.  I incorporated it also in New York City skyline as well.  I remember when our beloved "World Trade Center" was being built,  in some respects, the World Trade Center had some characteristics with  Kronos.  They were both over 100 stories tall, were a large rectangular solid that was metallic and shiny and had a tall pole on the top.  The World Trade Center also had two "skylobbies" where there was a cafeteria and was the exchange for local and express elevators.  The windows at the skylobbies were slightly different compared to the other floors and it is ironic that "Kronos" also had two or three sections with a pole(s) on top that had a red light that glowed.